


Third Candle 5771:  Ker-Ys, December 1939

by Tiferet



Category: Lightning War
Genre: Gen, chanukah 2010, chanukah 5771, chanukah candle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-04
Updated: 2010-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:47:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiferet/pseuds/Tiferet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Third LW Chanukah Candle, 5771/2010.  Liane Leffoy de Marigny doesn't understand why Michel Rosenthal doesn't want her to join a special educational programme in Italy, so Michel and her other professors explain matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Candle 5771:  Ker-Ys, December 1939

“But I want to go!” Liane could not understand why her teachers were being so _difficult_ , particularly de Valois. It was like Professor Rosenthal to want to keep her at Ker-Ys; she knew he liked her better than many of the other students, even though he would never admit it. But de Valois and Callebaut, who had been Professor Rosenthal’s teachers as well, were always reminding them both that she would eventually need to enter another programme eventually, and this was an accelerated one. “Papa says I should go, too. Sharolt went, and you’ve _always_ wanted to meet Sharolt!”

Professor Rosenthal leaned over and picked up the ribbon that had fallen out of her hair, shook his head, and tucked it into a notebook. Then he looked at the letter again, still shaking his head. Finally, he took a deep breath, and looked at her squarely. “Calculate for me the probability that anything your father would like you to do is really a good idea, Juliana.” He never said her whole name unless it was very serious.

Liane started to speak the retort that was already on her lips and then she fell silent, because she had actually heard the words Professor Rosenthal had just said. She glanced down at her hands, balled up in her lap. “It’s not Transsilvania,” she said in a stubborn voice, although she knew that she had lost the fight. “I wouldn’t go there, because they’re stupid there.”

“Not stupid,” Professor Rosenthal said, very softly. “Except in the sense that bigotry is stupid, of course. You would not call Sharolt or Proschenko a fool.”

Liane swallowed.

“Do the proof, Liane,” said Professor Rosenthal—Michel, she called him sometimes when they were alone, because it was strange to call him Professor when they were in his parents’ house, both being treated like children at play as they worked on boards and in notebooks—and suddenly he was Michel again. “It cannot be so difficult. You know how many times he has had plans for you, and how many times his plans for you have been plans you would want to fulfil. This is… _arithmetic_.”

Liane nodded slowly, reluctantly. She did not get up and walk to the board. They both knew she had been able to do simple arithmetic when she was three.

“Sharolt wrote me letters,” Michel told her, and there was something about his expression that puzzled Liane.

“Sharolt wrote letters and you didn’t show them to me?” Liane looked up at Callebaut and de Valois. “Did he—?”

“We’ve seen them,” said Callebaut, with a gentle look on his face.

De Valois gestured to the other chalkboard. “That’s why you’re not going to go,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “That’s why I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours and by daylight. You’ve seen those equations before. You did work on them.”

Liane blinked. “Only a little,” she said. “Sharolt’s working on _that_? And she asked us to help?” She almost wanted to go again; it was very advanced. Chaotic functions in the interstitial paths between _sefirot_ ; it had her thinking about the thesis she’d eventually have to write.

“You were the one who pointed out that if you converted it to musical notation, it would be a highly human-aversive qliphotic harmonic,” Callebaut reminded her. “I’m sure Michel would have seen it in time, but…”

Liane nodded. “It always seems odd,” she mused, “to call something like that _harmonic_.”

Michel chuckled a little, but his expression went grave again. “That’s not Sharolt’s work,” he said. “Although I’ve entertained the possibility that she intended it as a code. It’s a frequency analysis I’ve been working on, in the hope that I’ll be able to understand what she’s trying to say in the letters I haven’t shown you.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand,” said Liane.

“Only Sándor thinks he understands,” said Michel, “and he’s stopped writing to me, although he’s still in touch with Séverine.”

De Valois snorted. “Sándor would rather go on believing that he’s the only one who can understand his sister than accept that she’s insane.”

“Maybe so,” said Callebaut, “but that doesn’t mean he can’t understand her. Or that she’s wrong about what she is trying to say, only that she can no longer say it in a way that we can easily understand.”

“Callebaut,” said de Valois, “I value the openness of your mind, I sincerely do, but do take care that half of it doesn’t fall out when you’re up in the aether someday?” He snapped the top off an ampule of blood and threw his head back to drink it down fast. Liane looked away; she didn’t care to watch.

Michel picked up some folded papers and handed them to Liane. “This is what Sharolt sent me last week,” he said. “I know it’s important because it didn’t come through the post. The first of them came through the post, and were filled with inanities, but when I broke the second layer of wards, they were equations. Not those. Now, they come by courier, weeks or months after she writes them…and they are all like this.”

Liane unfolded the papers. They were covered with scrawls and diagrams—not all of it the same person’s, she thought, the hands were too different—in multiple colours of ink. All of the printing was crabbed and tiny and in little blocks at strange angles to one another and the paper was covered on both sides, all the way to the edge. One of the pages was written in a circular spiral—with little graphs in the corners—that folded in on itself until it was so dense at the centre that it was illegible.

“She’s gone mad,” said Liane, frowning. It happened sometimes to people who were really good at the kind of work they did.

“I think she was _driven_ mad,” Michel corrected her. “And we won’t let that happen to you. Not me, not Séverine—”

“Not any of us,” said de Valois.

Michel laughed nervously. “Vincent would kill me,” he said in agreement, and lightly touched Liane’s shoulder. “I know you are disappointed, but this is a trap.”

Liane nodded. And then she looked up at Callebaut and de Valois, de Valois who was the head of the department, after all. “So what are we going to do about this?”


End file.
